12:24 “When they let the prisoners out, they were
going to hang the one who had the keys. He handed them over. All the prisoners
left with them, including the gringo accused of killing a 12-year-old Lacandon
girl.”

That’s what
Juan tells us, a man who tends a cornfield on the farm across from my house in
El Chorro.

Juan lives
very nearby.

My father lets
him grow corn on that field, and he also keeps 12 beehives.

He pays
nothing for it, but makes gestures like the one today: he brought my mother a
big sack full of fresh black beans.

“Here, I
brought you this little gift, Doña Celinita . . . for these days of so much sorrow.”

A woman
selling pork comes by.

“I slaughtered
two and nearly all of it is gone.”

18:00 The day passed slowly.

I spent it harvesting
coffee, shucking the fresh beans with the children, planting seeds.

Today we ate
another gigantic rooster from the yard.

All day long
planes and helicopters of various sizes and shapes arrived.

They were bringing supplies.

They landed by
the high school and on the airstrip, now repaired.

The women
formed long lines for the supplies.

Comment at the
park: “The women who were looting the stores were the first ones asking for
supplies. People have no shame!”

Many people
came by my office today.

At about 5
o’clock I took a bath.

I went
upstairs to read.

That’s what I
do. . . . . . . . . . . . .

19:30 The
electricity goes out.

If it doesn’t
come back on in five minutes the town will spend another restless night.

That’s what we
were talking about this morning at the corner: anxiety increases in the dark,
everyone is afraid they’ll invade the town.

“There must be
some reason why they’re cutting off the electricity.”

“Besides they
said that if they came back this time it would be to kill. . . .”

19:50 Shelling toward the northwest.

Also in the
southwest.

The explosions
continue, more or less steadily.

It goes on for
a long time: more than 20 minutes.

Once again
widespread fear.

I go get my
uncle Rodrigo in his room on the other side of the upper patio.

We bring
chairs into my parents’ room.

We’re all
here.

20:12 You can hear the clock ticking in the
silence.

Our silence.

In the next
room, my sisters, nieces and nephews.

Edgar and
Génner must be there.

We hear a shot
from a small pistol near the school.

21:23 Relaxed conversation in the dark.

Booms to the
northwest.

Another one,
as I’m making this entry.

We’ve had
coffee and decide to go to our rooms.

21:30 More booms.

We’ve moved
our bed to a sort of niche, in the bedroom where Mapi and her family were
staying.

A sort of
niche, I was saying, with secure walls, no large windows nearby, where we’re
planning to build a very large closet.

I write by the
light of a small candle.

Blasts nearby.

23:00 Periods of sweet sleep in the midst of fear.

Through the
window I can see the sky, marvelously clear.

I go out into
total darkness.

The sky gives
off a very serene light.

The stars are
shining at all four points of the compass.

Magically
clear sky.

The vault of
heaven deserving of its name.

Isolated
shots, but that doesn’t matter beneath this sky.

I ask my wife
to join me.

We bring out a
mat, blankets, pillows.

And we lie
down on the terrace floor to contemplate the sky.

[i]
On Friday, a car bomb explodes at University Plaza in Mexico City. The Army establishes a perimeter around
Ocosingo, Las Margaritas and San Cristóbal.
Next, the Mexican Army goes on the offensive with infantry, armored
vehicles, tanks, helicopters and other aircraft to force the EZLN from the
area. The EZLN and Army continue to
clash.

[iii]
Quote from William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Efraín Bartolomé

Efraín
Bartolomé was born in Ocosingo, Chiapas, in
1950. His 15 books of poetry have been reissued several times. His work has
been collected in Agua lustral (Holy Water) (Poems 1982-1987, Mexican
Readings collection, published byCONACULTA); OFICIO: ARDER (Poet Afire) (Poems1982-1997), published
by UNAM;and EL SER QUE SOMOS (Being Who We Are), his first
collection to appear in Spain, published by Editorial Renacimiento(Seville,
2006). His most recent books are Cantando El Triunfo de las
cosas terrestres (Singing the Triumph of Earthly Things);and El son y el
viento (Sound and Wind), both appearing in 2011. Awards: Mexico City
Prize, 1982; Aguascalientes National Poetry Prize, 1984; Carlos Pellicer
National Poetry Prize for work published in 1992; Jaime Sabines International
Poetry Prize, 1996. The Mexican government awarded him the National Forest and
Wildlife Merit Prize in 1994, for the contribution of his work to promoting
awareness of Nature as sacred territory. He received the 1998 Chiapas Arts
Prize, the highest honor the Chiapas State Government grants its artists. He is
a member of the National Council of Creative Artists. In 1999 he received the
Ledig Rowohlt Fellowship in Switzerland. In 2001, the Mexican Heritage
Corporation of the United States awarded him the International Latino Arts
Award. In 2002 he received a fellowship from the Landeshauptstadt München
Kulturreferat, in Germany. He represented Mexico at the First Ibero-American
Poetry Summit (Salamanca, Spain, 2005). His work is featured in the major
anthologies of his generation, and his poems have been translated into English,
French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Galician, Arabic, Peninsular Mayan,
Nahuatl and Esperanto.

Kevin Brown

Kevin Brown
was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1960. A biographer and essayist, he is the
author of Malcolm X: His Life and Legacy
(1995) and Romare Bearden (1994). He
was a contributing editor to the New York
Public Library African-American Desk Reference (2000). Since 1978, Brown’s
essays, articles and reviews on the visual arts, cinema, dance, literature,
music and politics have appeared in Afterimage,
The Kansas City Star, Kirkus, the London Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, the Threepenny
Review and the Washington Post
Bookworld, among others. He studied
under translator Gregory Rabassa at Queens College, City University of New
York, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree with dual majors in Spanish as well as
Translating & Interpreting. Brown’s interview with Rabassa was published in
the December 2006 issue (Vol.7, No.2) of the University of Delaware’s Review of Latin American Studies. Excerpts
from his ongoing translation into English of Efraín Bartolomé’s Ocosingo War Diary have appeared or will
appear in Asymptote, The Brooklyn Rail, eXchanges, Ezra,Guernica, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Metamorphoses
and Two Lines. Calypso Editions will
publish the complete translation in 2014.